


State of Mind

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-12
Updated: 2010-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4609197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn





	State of Mind

  
Terror.   
  
That’s what I remember, terror and horror. I was fighting, struggling as the physician shaved my head, preparing to put the mind of a corporate slug into my brain. You can’t imagine how loud I was screaming. My throat hurt and my lungs felt like they were bursting, but my strength wasn’t enough to break my bonds, and my voice wasn’t loud enough. There was nothing I could do.   
  
And the Doctor didn’t come.  
  
It hurt, at first. But I’m used to pain. Sometimes I even like pain. It lets you know you’re alive. So I could handle that. It didn’t break me.   
  
But then suddenly Kiv was inside me, and I almost lost myself as he barged through my mind and into my body, shouting and raving, greed and pain — and fear. Fear worse even than my own. He was desperate not to die. It was the fear that I recognized. The fear was his weakness, whereas my fear was my strength. I embrace fear. That’s why I stayed with the Doctor, because the life he led frightened me and he frightened me, and I loved every minute of it. Kiv hated being afraid, and that was where I was stronger than he. Despite having all the technology on his side, the physician trying to supercede my personality with his, he wasn’t strong enough to kill me outright. I was in control of my fear. He had no control over his.   
  
As he muscled his way into my body, usurping it for his own ends, I did what I used to do when my stepfather did the same. Maybe I need to thank my stepfather for this — what a horrible thought! — because I was very used to my body not being my own. I retreated to where I was safe — where I’ve always been safe — a little room inside myself that my stepfather forced me to make when I was very young. I hadn’t had to go there for a long time. The Doctor opened that room, let me know that wasn’t the only safe place inside myself, gave me control of my body and control of my life. But now with Kiv, I was glad I had it. It was strong. Impenetrable. Even with him at his full mental powers, he couldn’t penetrate my safe-room.  
  
Things hadn’t happened as Kiv had expected. Sil died. And the physician. Yrcanos killed them both. Then there was a scream, and a light, and a blinding white pain, and my Doctor hadn’t come....  
  
And then time seemed to stop. Everything went confused, there was a laugh, and a skip, and then it all happened again, and Yrcanos was standing before me again, and Sil died and the physician died, and the Doctor didn’t come and Yrcanos turned again to kill me — kill us, Kiv and myself —  
  
And then he didn’t.   
  
There was a sound like a TARDIS, and a sound of wild, maniacal laughter, and Yrcanos held the gun to Kiv’s bald head and told him he was going to kill him — me — us. And Kiv, quick thinker, opened his arms and kissed Yrcanos and told him he was a strong and mighty warrior king, and that together we could be a force to reckon with throughout the galaxy...   
  
Yrcanos wasn’t such a brilliant strategist that he could recognize a ruse. He thought it was still me.   
  
The freed slaves and the mad transfer of power shifted the entire balance of power on Telos Beta. Kiv and the Mentors had no power any longer. Yrcanos took all the freed slaves with him to his planet Krontep, and he and Kiv, in my body, ruled his kingdom with much shouting and giving of orders. Kiv thought he could start up a new corporate empire in my name. He was disappointed — Yrcanos’ warlike planet was cut off from all communications by a general consensus of more civilized worlds, so out-planet trade was impossible. His entire life’s work was useless. He had to settle for ruling and trading only on Krontep. It was quite a comedown for him to go from Corporate Magnate to mere Warrior Queen.   
  
And all the time, I was inside him, waiting, hiding, deep in my safe-room. When I was a child the room was small. Now that I had traveled with the Doctor, it was bigger on the inside. I started thinking of it as my own little TARDIS inside the universe of my self, safe and secure, and in it I could travel anywhere.   
  
I traveled to see my father. My real father, before he died, when he would take me sailing in the warm waters off California. How when I was very young he’d take me on nature walks and show me the different plants on the journey, telling stories about how the Native Americans use to utilize them. The cedars, that made their clothing and their buildings and their boats and everything. The manzanita, that was medicine, that would heal the rashes made by the poison oak. The cattails, which were a staple like wheat. The giant redwoods, sequoias, trees so massive they could almost make you understand God. It was these walks that made me want to be a botanist.   
  
I visited my mother. So frightened, so blind, so foolish. She loved me, but she couldn’t see.   
  
I even visited my memories of my stepfather. I saw them as if from afar, trying to understand what he was thinking, but mostly watching myself. Trying to see the damage he was causing, understand where I needed to heal.   
  
But mostly I stayed with the Doctor. I went through our life together again and again and again. Every adventure. Every smile. Every flicker of fear. Every burst of anger, every heated moment of passion. There was a part of me wanted to hate him, even if he was dead — I didn’t know what had happened to him, why he’d failed to rescue me, why he’d been acting so strangely before we lost each other. But I love him so... and I needed him so. I needed my memories of him. I needed to watch him, every moment he spent with me, watching him heal me, my Doctor, touch me and strengthen me and show me what I really was.  
  
And Kiv would wake up in the middle of the night crying uncontrollably, unable to remember that his dreams were really me.   
  
Kiv made free use of my body. He quite enjoyed opening his legs to Yrcanos and letting his power fill him. Hidden safe in my TARDIS, glancing occasionally out the windows, I was surprised by Yrcanos. For a man of shouting and bluster and arrogant self-importance, he had a gentle side. Sometimes he could be so generous, granting Kiv freedoms and gifts without prompting. Sometimes he could be tender, massaging my body’s aching muscles. His kisses surprised me the most. Passionate, but thoughtful, and he made love not in selfishness, but as if it were a game of strategy, and he could only win if his partner was pleased.   
  
In truth, the times with Yrcanos were the only times I bothered to open my windows and look out at the life Kiv was leading. Yrcanos was not intelligent, but for all that, what with his arrogance and his self-importance and his hidden gentleness, he reminded me of someone....   
  
And it was late at night, as Kiv was lying in bed beside Yrcanos, the warrior’s fingers lightly tracing through my hair... that I realized it was my hair he was caressing. I moved my hand, and it was my hand, and I had the power to move it. Kiv’s amphibian consciousness had fallen asleep, bored with the peace and tenderness of the moment, and my body was mine. For now.   
  
So I took control. The way the Doctor had showed me. In the past Kiv had always acted entirely passive as Yrcanos grunted his passions away, — his amphibious ancestry didn’t have sex the same way as mammals, so he could only let Yrcanos take the lead, hang on and follow. But this time, it was me. I knew what I wanted — anything! Anything so long as it was MINE. And Yrcanos was there, and tender, and loved this body with every part of him that could even understand the word.   
  
I surged upwards in the bed, smothering Yrcanos with kisses, biting him in my desperation. It was like it had been with the Doctor, all anger and fury and desperate NEED, and I launched myself at Yrcanos, swallowing him deep inside, rubbing myself against him, feeling his flesh between my teeth.   
  
The poor king didn’t know what hit him. His strong warrior’s arms turned passive, his powerful face went blank in ecstacy, his breath ragged with shock. I’d never heard him shout so loud. And with Yrcanos, that is really saying something.   
  
The shout — and my subsequent orgasm — woke Kiv. He came surging back into consciousness, angry, frightened, confused. But I had done it. I knew I was there. I knew I could take control.   
  
And Kiv knew it too.   
  
If I didn’t fight him, he would have buried me. There was no longer room for the two of us in my body. So systematically, I began inching Kiv out.   
  
It was like a war. As Yrcanos strapped on his armor and went to fight against other states, I settled down and fought in the state of my mind.   
  
At first it was hard. Sometimes Kiv would notice what I was doing and crack down, trying to drown me out with drugs or mind-games or hours and hours of sex with anything and anyone he could grab — he really liked having sex, he thought it was the best thing about owning my body. But no matter how he tried to weed me out, no matter how much ground I lost, I could always retreat safe inside my little TARDIS, recover, recoup, reconsider. Inside where all my memories were, were all my experiences, all my adventures — and my Doctor. I had an entire world to retreat to, and the memory of the Doctor to protect me.   
  
Kiv couldn’t get at me in there. He could never get rid of me. And slowly, slowly, I began to gain some ground.   
  
I started small. Little things, subtle things that I made Kiv do or think or say. The rooms became filled with flowers. Kiv took up gardening, enjoying the look and feel of the plants on Krontep. He didn’t even notice when he started taking scientific notes on their growth cycles and the mapping out the botanical zones on the planet. But that was all me. All of it.   
  
Kiv never spoke to the servants — they were still slaves, Yrcanos not being the most liberated of rulers, but at least their minds were no longer being corrupted. I started to form relationships with them. Idle chats, little comments, until finally it was laughter and stories from home and friendships, even the occasional emancipation. Kiv couldn’t hold on there, either.   
  
He tried to hold on to sex, but I was so much better at it than he was he started wanting me to take over, there. But I’d only take over with Yrcanos — a girl has to have some principles. Finally he stopped selling my body to the local butcher boys — as I considered the other warriors in the palace. Things got so much better with Yrcanos after that, until Kiv himself was seduced by me. Sometimes, as my body was flushed and panting and screaming out the names of various deities Kiv wouldn’t even notice that he had collapsed in a wordless mental hollow of ecstacy and there was nothing left of him at all.   
  
In the end Kiv was only there for court and business dealings. And slowly I inched him out there, as well. The Queen’s rulings became tinged with mercy. Her dealings became morally fair.   
  
Finally there were two things that killed him. Two tiny, helpless, flawless things that he with his cold blooded amphibious background and his empty, lustful, avaricious soul couldn’t begin to understand. He wasn’t a mammal. The one thing he could never understand was the one thing which was the most important thing to me.   
  
My children.   
  
The first time I held my daughter he was so bored he was almost disgusted. By the time I was holding my son, he was gone. There was almost nothing left of him at all. Those tiny hands, those helpless, chirping children were too much for his hollow soul. They killed him so softly that he didn’t even know he was dying.   
  
His corpse was still inside my mind, rotting, influencing my actions, but his consciousness had perished. Finally, finally, after everything, I was mostly myself again.   
  
I was angry. I was lonely. I was still confused by everything that had happened on Telos Beta. But I was no longer dying inside. I had taken the lessons the Doctor had taught me, and I was my own person.   
  
I was free.  



End file.
